Just got to part 43 of the tutorial, adding collection items to the town and field. During testing, with the fireSword equipped: for some reason the player character was taking -90some damage a turn in battle. I assume it is from the fire effect hitting the player not the enemy, rather than poison, which does -5~12 damage?

I went back through the setup for the fire element and the fire sword, comparing my values to the tutorial, and found them entered as posted. I was fighting an Evil Supporter in an Active Time Battle.

More incidentally: I notice when Boost or Lessen abilities are used, the Speed up/down message, and the Strength up/down message overlap each other. I didn't see a way (being new) to display one then the other, or offset one display down below the other.

Make sure your fire effect doesn't have any Status Condition (or at least none that damages HP) set up.

As for the overlapping notifications, go to Battle System > Battle Texts and check out the Add Status Effect Notification settings. You can e.g. set up multiple positions or add random offsets to the notification positions.Alternatively, you can also set up different notifications (including positions) for each status effect by enabling Own Notification in the effect's Notification settings.

I tested some more and it looks like active time battles have a random )fairly often) glitch where the sword attack does not do damage, but does not display a miss. It plays the attack animation and the spark effect of hitting, but there is no damage number display and the enemies do not take damage to their gauge. So I might have been assuming incorrectly that it was the fire sword, because they were not taking damage but I was taking more than I had seen as usual before? I also had just one ATB where the timer filled but the menu did not display, but I have not been able to recreate that.

Thank you for the help! I played with the custom Notifications to get something I like. (x=0,y=-.5,z=0)